First MySpace Poll Results Are In….

…and they say that MySpace users are off the charts – compared to the rest of the online population — when it comes to checking out political news online. And they’re more likely to be independent than most Americans, more likely to switch parties from 2004 and vote for a Democrat, think that the “war on terror” is the most important election issue and very likely to vote. The average age of the survey respondent: 25.

The point of the study to be released Thursday — the first of monthly MySpace Impact Presidential Polls released by the online goliath –

is to “alert the campaigns and the politicians that MySpace users are politically active and that they’re going to vote,” Lee Brenner, Director of MySpace IMPACT/Public Affairs tells us.

Oh, the suits already know that. Every candidate worth their forked tongue has tapped the 18-year-old in their office to create them a MySpace page, which they’ve used to milk the wallets of the site’s 70 million active U.S. users…and uh, of course provide them valuable information about the candidate’s policy positions.

Instead, consider this poll as another warning shot to campaigns to think about listening to people who traditional polls don’t reach. Like young people — who frequently don’t use land phone lines that pollsters call.

But we’ve got a couple of bones to pick with the MySpace poll methodology. For one, it asked people to click on a banner ad between Nov. 28 and Dec. 4 and then complete an online survey. Uh, if you’re going to take time to do that, aren’t you generally going to be MORE into politics?

To bone No. 1, MySpace’s Brenner said: “Yeah, possibly. But if someone is at home, and they get a phone call (from a pollster) asking them to take a survey, they’re making a decision to participate in that survey in the same way.”

Fair enough. But here’s the other question: There’s 70 million MySpace users and only 750 over 18 completed the only survey? So what were the other 69.9 million busy doing, stalking James Blunt?

Again, MySpace reps say that the survey was representative of the MySpace world in the same way that a phone survey of 1,000 people is a thermometer under the voting public’s tongue. And yes, we briefly thought of using another popular thermometer destination there, but figured the politics blog readers are more likely to be offended than those on The Poop. Whatever. MySpace is getting back to us with how many people actually filled out the survey, and we’ll pass that on before engaging in further needling.

In the meantime, forget the Iowa caucuses, where the average caucuser is almost as old as most of the candidates. We’re waiting on results of the MySpace primary, to be held Jan. 2.